


come back to you one by one

by solacefruit



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Gen, OC Cats - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 03:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solacefruit/pseuds/solacefruit
Summary: “Do you know why we don’t touch the koi?” said Linnetleaf.Without waiting for Waspstream to answer, she said, “There was once an elder, long ago, who spent all her time watching them. Learning their secrets. Eventually, she had a revelation. She said the ancestors told her that these fish are full of spirits. Those who get lost on their way to join the ancestors. She said they find this pool and the koi—who made a bargain with the ancient ones at the dawn of the world—swallow them, having promised to keep them safe until the time that the ancestors finally come to take the spirits and the koi to the blessed place.”Linnetleaf paused, watching the shadows move below the perfect water. “I want you to catch one and bring it to me.”





	come back to you one by one

**Author's Note:**

> _love is going to lead you by the hand_   
>  _into a white and soundless place..._

“Do you know why we don’t touch the koi?” said Linnetleaf. Without waiting for Waspstream to answer, she said, “There was once an elder, long ago, who spent all her time watching them. Learning their secrets. Eventually, she had a revelation. She said the ancestors told her that these fish are full of spirits. Those who get lost on their way to join the ancestors. She said they find this pool and the koi—who made a bargain with the ancient ones at the dawn of the world—swallow them, having promised to keep them safe until the time that the ancestors finally come to take the spirits and the koi to the blessed place.” Linnetleaf paused, watching the shadows move below the perfect water. “I want you to catch one and bring it to me.”

Waspstream waited for a sign that Linnetleaf was lying, that she had made a mistake or a joke. Any indication that she meant something other than what she had said. It didn’t come, and as Waspstream sat in silence, watching her friend watch the water, she accepted that Linnetleaf truly _believed_.

“You know I can’t do that,” said Waspstream, gently.

“You can,” said Linnetleaf at once. “I know you can. _You_ know you can. You’ve caught faster fish in your time. There are so many of them—and look.”

Linnetleaf raised a paw and stretched it out over the edge of the pool. She hovered it for a moment and then touched it to the dark surface. The fish below didn’t startle or swim away. With placid curiosity, the nearest one came closer, its mouth moving as though whispering a constant stream of words they couldn’t hear. Linnetleaf pulled her paw away.

“They aren’t afraid,” she said. “They aren’t afraid of us.”

Waspstream had never thought much about the internal lives of fish. They were like insects or plants. She had unconsciously presumed there was a great space inside them, where the thinking part of them should be—the part that dreamed and felt and knew it was alive—but aside from that, or perhaps because of it, she had never thought much about them. Now she was.

The koi were left alone because the tall folk loved them. That was the truth of the story. The real truth, not Linnetleaf’s version. Taking a koi would bring the anger of the _sthyin-naia_ , the people-of-the-light, the deathless enemy, right to the clan. Things like it had happened before. The clan’s territory would begin to smell of dogs and long-walkers as they worked pathways through the trees and shrubs and open fields, hunting for their lost fish. The smells of the growing world would suffer from their contact. Prey would hide.

Then cats would vanish. The clan would lose lovers and friends. They would lose family. And they would never find bodies. Just a final place, one that stank of a terrified clan-mate and a hint of metal and the overwhelming, unforgettable presence of _sthyin-naia_. That was simply what it was to live so close to them. The kind with many names: the tall folk, the shining ones.

Waspstream had never considered why the koi were special to them. It had never mattered before. She wasn’t sure it mattered now, either, but Linnetleaf’s earnestness made her uncomfortable.

“Why would the ancestors make a bargain with fish?”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re just… fish, Linnetleaf,” said Waspstream. “They’re not like us: they aren’t _really_ alive. They don’t have feelings or spirits. They’re empty.”

“Where better to keep something than in something empty,” murmured Linnetleaf. She didn’t pose it as a question. “I think you’re wrong, though. I think our ancestors were wiser than we are.”

Waspstream flattened her ears.

“Please,” said her friend.

One of the koi was circling before them. Waspstream could imagine her muscles moving into position, her shoulders and spine and legs tensing to spring. She knew well the squeeze of cold water, the sudden rush of wet deafness, the crunch of teeth through scale and bone, and the pull of that familiar feeling made her want it. The koi was big, but she could still catch it and drag it from the pond. She could watch it gasp on the grass. She could.

She didn’t move.

The koi she watched was _nask_ -coloured—orange, black, and white. The same as Waspstream’s sister, her mother, and her grandmother before her. The koi had black around one eye, orange the other. Sorrelclaw had even had the same markings, although hers were the other way around. The thought made Waspstream hesitate.

There was no reason to believe that lost spirits lived on in fish. What would they _do_ in that slimy darkness? Sleep on and on until the ancestors finally came to gather them? That was no resting place for a warrior—and there were so many lost warriors out in the world. So many that had vanished. So many without a vigil. Waspstream couldn’t imagine those countless cats curled together slumbering under the skin of a fish. She knew what was under that skin: bones, blood, flesh, oil. It was nothing sacred there.

And yet.

She didn’t like the flatness in the eyes of that muttering koi.

“I need one,” pleaded Linnetleaf.

 “You’re asking too much of me,” said Waspstream. “If I catch this koi for you, they will come for us. All of us.”

Linnetleaf appeared not to hear her. “Our ancestors will understand,” she said. She seemed to be transfixed, staring at the water again. “They have to. I have to do this.”

“Not our ancestors. The shining ones. These koi are theirs.”

“These koi are their own,” snarled Linnetleaf, startling Waspstream with the suddenness of the sound. “The spirits in them are _ours_. Our people!” She drew in a deep breath. “We can take them back, Waspstream. If I just get the right one, I can bring Sorrelclaw back to us. I can bring them all back. I can—I can make things right. I can do what I was meant to do.”

She was shaking now, fur prickled all over.

There was a long pause.

“No-one blames you, Linnetleaf,” said Waspstream slowly. “Things… happen. You’ve always done your best. I know that. We can’t control who stays with us and who goes.”

“I can,” said Linnetleaf. She spoke so quietly, Waspstream almost wasn’t sure she had spoken at all. Linnetleaf jerked her head up to gaze directly, unflinchingly, into her eyes. “Please. Give me one chance.”

Waspstream said nothing, wanting to look away.

“We can see our friends again. Our mentors. Our siblings. Everyone we miss. We can see them again.”

There was a pang of sharp pain inside Waspstream. Not around her heart, but lower, as though the bottom of her stomach had fallen out, leaving a great cold hollow in her middle. In it, there was enough space for her grief to echo. It was full of memories but infinitely too large to be warmed by them. And in that cavern, there groaned a hunger there that was unlike any other she could imagine.

“Will you help me?” whispered Linnetleaf. “ _We_ can gather them.”

Waspstream opened and shut her jaws, trying to speak but unable to find the words to say what she felt. She nodded.

 

Then the floodlights came on. The world turned shining white.

**Author's Note:**

> _some moments last forever,_   
>  _but some flare out with love, love, love..._
> 
>  
> 
> — the Mountain Goats, "Love, Love, Love."
> 
> Work created as part of the [Ailuronymy Writing Challenge](http://ailuronymy.tumblr.com/post/159045637127/come-back-to-you-one-by-one).


End file.
